While the company had a relatively new partner program, it had been created to bring together the partners from four companies which had been brought together to for BeyondTrust, and the program has now been revamped to bring it up to state of the art standards.

BeyondTrust , which started in Privileged Access Management and has evolved more broadly from that into intelligent identity and access security, has announced the renaming and reworking of their channel program, which is now called PartnerTrust. The program is designed to make partners more efficient, with better enablement, more systemic engagement and simplified processes.

This program is a redo of one done only two years ago, but that original program had a specific purpose, following Bomgar’s purchase of three other PAM companies and renaming the lot as BeyondTrust, one of the acquired companies.

“We did a major channel program revision in 2021, but that was about harmonizing the four existing channel programs that had come through M&As,”  said Rob Spee, SVP Global Channel & Alliances at BeyondTrust. “I was asked to build a next generation modern partner ecosystem for the cloud SaaS era, involving partners who can not only sell but who can land and expand. So we had to expand the program to include different partner types in one program and with one agreement.”

The task both involved bringing in quality new partners and dispensing with some old ones who were not a good match for BeyondTrust’s vision going forward.

“When I took the helm, we had 1500 partners and a high volume who wanted to join the program, but we also didn’t have the right focus on those who were a good fit,” Spee indicated.  “We trimmed it own to a good fit, so that we now have about 1000 partners and that includes the new ones. Our new program lets them shift their business model, and also includes influencers. We also now have a strong relationship with distributors. We have shifted the long tail of partners to them and also are getting the distributors to enable them on services.”

Enablement through the program is enhanced by making BeyondTrust’s professional services best practices available to partners through a Partner Knowledgebase.

“This exposes the knowledge base of our professional services, including things like migrating from an end of life product,” Spee said.

Another new enablement feature is Partner Journeys.

“This creates training paths through the portal,” Spee stated. “We are starting to create new journeys for different partner personas.”

Face to face training is being enhanced as well as portal-based.

“We are expanding our online training, but also reintroducing and expanding face to face training,” Spee noted. “Partners like the collaboration with the instructor and other partners.”

Net Promoter Scores [NPS] have also been added to partner-delivered projects for feedback to ensure successful customer outcomes.

“The Net Promoter scores determine if partners are developing high quality projects,” Spee said. “I found that when partners really embrace this, the information is shared with customers. That will be the next step on our partner locators.”

Additional engagement resources include adding more of the National Channel Account Manager [CAM], Services Partner Manager, Emerging Market, and Partner Success roles.

“We now have between 20 and 25 CAMs,” Spee said. “We are getting all the pieces of the puzzle together. Last year we added a Partner Success Manager. The  program looks simple but there is complexity behind the scenes. We have CAMs dedicated to our boutique partners as well.”

The Partner Advisory Board, which was just introduced last year, is being strengthened.

“We are continuing to learn how to have powerful advisory boards that are very engaging,” Spee stated. “We make it very interactive.”

A BeyondTrust Seller bonus program based on engagement with partners has been introduced.

“With every company I’ve worked on, there are challenges with getting alignment with sellers and channels,” Spee said. “We wanted to align partner strategy with our rep compensation. So the rep compensation is based on what the ecosystem does. They are now much more engaged in partner selection and engagement as a result.”

An expanded badging program lets partners better message their partnership status to the market.

“What we have had in the past is individual badges for certifications,” Spee noted. “This is more specialized badges for the partner level, and requires them to have specific numbers of trained engineers.

New Trifecta programs – which involve multiple partners as well as BeyondTrust – are also being encouraged.

“The Trifecta strategy involves going to market with at least two technology partner, which can be any type of partner,” Spee said.

Finally, many processes have been simplified, such as an online fully automated partner agreement with a click-to-accept process, and a co-delivery program to accelerate the implementation of BeyondTrust solutions.

“We have also set up a new Distributor Quoting Pilot that gives us a much faster quoting process,” Spee indicated. “This gets us caught up to where we need to be anyway. It lets distributors quote using our tools. This is in pilot now, and next year we want to roll it out to all distributors globally.”

A streamlined certification process that leverages authorized ecosystem partners for practical assessments has also been introduced.

“It decreases the time it takes to earn implementation certifications.” Spee said. “Our certification requires a lab assessment. Until now, we relied on our own professional services team to do that. We have limited resources, which means backlogs and unhappy partners. So we are training our partners to do that, and  plan to do it for distributors as well.”